HOW do you turn the disaster that is a messy separation from the father of your three energy-packed young boys into an amazing success story?

You get yourself fit and healthy. And so many people recognise the change and want to know how you did it, reports the Evening Times.

What you then do is study hard, and set up your own health and fitness company.

That’s exactly what happened to Christy Hyslop. The lady from Kilmacolm in Renfrewshire is set to launch her new health and fitness company Lose It And Love It.

However, a couple of years ago, her outlook was far more bleak.

“You see yourself reaching for the night-time bottle of wine and the jumbo-sized bag of crisps,” recalls the 33 year-old single mum who was facing a trying future.

“But you know that’s all going to end badly, so you have to completely re-evaluate your life.”

Christy hadn’t expected her marriage to break up. Nor could she have anticipated the emotional stress she was suffering.

But she knew she couldn’t surrender to the inevitable; comfort eating, weight increase, and the depression which results from lower self-esteem.

“I realised I had to pull it together, for me and the boys,” she admits. “And given the stress and the emotions I was going through I began to look at how food was connected, that I was headed in the direction of comfort eating.”

Christy, who previously worked in retail, was a stunning size eight before she had her three boys. But after giving birth she went up to a size fourteen.

“After the separation I realised how my mood could be changed by food so did a lot of research and began to eat healthily.

“Almost immediately I could see changes in my weight, my skin began to glow, my hair was shinier, everything altered.”

The physical – and emotional - changes in Christy were so dramatic friends immediately picked up on them.

“Word spread and thanks to social media I was soon inundated with calls and messages asking how I’d managed it.

“I was so encouraged I then began to study health and nutrition seriously and took qualifications.

“From that point, most nights were taken up with people calling me asking for advice.

“It wasn’t too long before friends were saying I should be charging for the service and it made me think of turning my personal experience into a career.”

Christy has done exactly that and is now qualified to train people for competition, to make sure athletes eat the right food to match their discipline, and to help ordinary people to lose weight.

“Most of us have the same eating habits; we have the same thing for breakfast, for lunch, we go about our day mindlessly eating and then we grab the high-sugar snacks at our desks.

“What I do is talk to people about their lifestyles, try to get to know the client, and work out what their issues are, whether deep-rooted habits or emotional.”

Christy offers a sports exercise eight week programme and a weight loss twelve week programme, made up of eight sessions.

And she leaves no plate unturned in the quest to discover why people become overweight.

“Some people say they don’t eat very much but they are clearly overweight.

“I get them to photograph their food and send me the pics. I want to see what they eat, the content, the portion sizes, the lot.

“What’s often clear is that people go into denial where food is concerned. They may go out for a jog and think they can then eat a Flake but the reality is they’ve only burnt off sixty calories.

“They end up pounding the treadmills, and getting nowhere, not realising that your nutrition determines your weight by eighty per cent.”

Christy adds: “For most people, you can’t out train a bad diet. And we have to beware there is a massive obesity epidemic in the world.”

Does this mean she can make a fatty slim in eight weeks?

“This is about me helping people to change their thinking,” she says, smiling.

“This isn’t about them going on a diet with me. This is about getting people into a different mindset, encouraging them to eat lovely tasty food that’s not high calorie.

“And it’s about a programme that will hopefully last forever.”

Christy now has a new partner in her life, and she and her three ‘wild’ boys are all happy.

“If I can change my way of thinking about food and fitness they can too.”

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